Marti Stelling

An orchard in North Yorkshire have been turning unwanted apples into juice and cider for more than 15 years. 

Cameron Smith, the owner of Orchards of Husthwaite, said supermarkets are too obsessed with the ‘perfect apple’ which results in too many being thrown away. 

He said: “The great thing about making apple juice is that the apples don’t have to be perfect. They can be windfalls as long as they aren’t too dirty or rotten!”

Orchards of Husthwaite began 15 years ago as a research project by the village history society.

Cameron said: “We tried to capture the village history in terms of fruit growing. Husthwaite has been known as the orchard village of North Yorkshire for centuries. We have unusually sunny weather here which makes it perfect for growing fruit.”

In the 1920s and 30s wholesalers used to come from Leeds to Husthwaite to pick fruit and sell it to jam factories. Commercial fruit growing was an important aspect of the village until around the 1960s when golden delicious apples started being imported from France.

When researching the history of the orchards, the village group realised a lot of the original plants were either gone or dying. They used a map showing where the orchards were in 1856 and planted more than 1200 trees in the village replicating these locations.

Cameron said: “The first question we were faced with was what we were going to do with all this fruit. We started Orchards of Husthwaite as a community enterprise and donated £50,000 of profit into the village. I bought the orchard commercially eight years ago and giving back to the community is still incredibly important to me.”

The orchard offers a juicing service where people can bring their own apples to be turned into raw or pasteurised juice.

Cameron said: “This year has been an excellent year for apples. I’ve had to pick up more storage because we ran out of space! Sadly a lot of people don’t know what to do with all these apples. People with a big apple tree will get half a tonne of fruit on it this year and most of it will rot. Even in our village with all its history, I expect five or six tonnes of apples and pears will go to waste.”

The juicing service is Cameron’s answer to avoiding this. He recommends people bring between 50 and 120 kilos of apples to be pressed. It costs a pound a litre for raw juice in plastic containers and £1.80 per litre for pasteurised juice in glass bottles.

Cameron said: “The glass bottles make great Christmas presents. A lot of our customers will print their own labels and give them as gifts!

“I want to encourage people to use the apples they have and not let them go to waste. A bottle of homemade apple juice is much tastier than the store bought equivalent and you’ll know exactly where the fruit has come from.”

Published in print for The Yorkshire Post